in ignis amoris
by Lavender Flame
Summary: "Didst thou but know the inly touch of love, thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow as seek to quench the fire of love with words." –William Shakespeare. One cannot kill their love with words, Draco and Luna.
1. incipiens

Author's Note: A series of Draco/Luna flash fictions written for the HPFC OTP Boot Camp Challenge. Write fifty stories for fifty prompts about one pairing. Will be posted five at a time in ten chapters. Subtitles are the prompt the flash fiction was written for. Enjoy, and please review!

* * *

**drawn**

Draco is convinced that the History of Magic lesson can't get any worse when Luna Lovegood leans over his shoulder. "Ooh, is that a Thestral you're drawing? It's a pretty one, isn't it?" She's just quiet enough that Binns doesn't notice, with a mystical grin on her face.

"What do _you_ care, _Loony_?" He moves so that his arm covers the artwork on the parchment that was supposed to be for notes. Draco looks back at her for a second, at the straggly blonde hair coming loose from a bun, straying on her pale cheeks. Then he turns away, shoves the parchment back into his bag. Wasn't like he was writing anything, anyways.

"Are you able to _see _Thestrals, or have you just looked at pictures?"

He ignores her, folds his arms on the table and lays his head down on them.

"Hmm, Draco?" She tries to touch his shoulder to get his attention as he jerks away.

"What is your _problem_?" he hisses, loud enough that someone nearby shushes him, and he shoots them a glare in return. He talks quieter. "And who says it's a Thebgral, anyway?"

"A Thebgral? I can't say I've heard of them…."

He hits his head against the table a few times and groans, checks the time. Twenty minutes left. He may just snap before then. Wait until he tells his father that _Loony Lovegood _is trying to distract him from his lessons; she'll be out of Hogwarts right away, and he'll never have to look at those creepy silver eyes from across the Great Hall again.

Though it's probably his fault he's staring in the first place.

**playful**

Luna walks by herself along the edges of the lake, and Draco can't help but notice, from where he leans against a tree trunk, that she's straying dangerously close to the Forbidden Forest. A warning keeps forming on his lips, but it never escapes.

Eventually he stands, and approaches her, trademark Malfoy smirk on his face. She's worse than a first year, sometimes. "Wouldn't go there if I were you, Loony," he calls.

She spins around, quick enough to tangle her hair and scarf together. Then she grins, and runs towards him, and for a second Draco's afraid that she's going to try and hug him or something, when she pokes his shoulder and says, "You're it!"

"What the bloody h—" He stops himself and gives in with a shake of his head, and runs after her as she squeals and runs around the tree trunk a few times. He's out of breath after a while; she's a faster runner than he would've expected, and he doesn't do much running at Quidditch practice for experience. "Come on, give me a break," he tries, just wanting to win somehow to prove a point.

She reverses directions, slower, and moves towards him. He taps her shoulder, and within a second taps him back.

"Oh, no fair. That's cheating."

"No, that's _winning_."

He has to give in to the cheery, childish look on her face, reluctantly.

**enamoured**

It's at breakfast one day that Draco begins to worry. Goyle's caught him watching _her _again, and he's starting to wonder why he always does that. What's so damn captivating about her? Stupid, naïve Loony Lovegood. The crazy girl. Even Potter can't deny that.

But….

She's different, and he likes that, because he's different, too. Just not in the same way. But she _gets _him, and what he needs, in a way that not a lot of other people can. He tells himself it's just because she's a Ravenclaw; they're supposed to be the smart-alecks, aren't they? The ones who know everything, even about him?

Granger pretends to know that, too, but she's in Gryffindor. Damn them, too.

"Dra-co!" someone sings behind him, a too familiar ring in his ears. He gets one second of preparation before she's wrapping her arms up around his neck, suffocating him, and the others are laughing wildly. He coughs, but it doesn't dissuade them.

"Wha-at?" he asks, mocking her tone.

"You left your book in Charms," she says, and lets go of him, pulls it out of her bag, in perfect condition, and hands it to him.

"Uh, thanks."

"Mmhmm." She ruffles his hair like he's a puppy and he scowls as she walks away. He goes to shove the book in his bag when a note falls out of it.

_Love, oh love, and its pretty face; it hides in shadows, sometimes out of place._

Damn Lovegood and her little games.

**into the fire**

Luna wanders into Honeyduke's, aiming a princess-like wave at the cashier while her fluffy white skirt swirls around her legs. Draco turns at the sound of the door's bell from where he is in the corner and his eyes follow her movements. She spots him, waves at him too, then scurries over.

"Draco! Have you seen the new liquorice wand colors? They're just lovely."

There's a batch of snapdragon flowers on a barrette in hair that matches her skirt, which he examines. "Oh. No, I haven't," he answers finally.

"That's all right; I'll show you." She takes him by the hand and starts to drag him off while he splutters. Who gave her permission to touch him, let alone pull him around? Then again, he's not complaining much, not as much as he would with some others. Her hand is soft and warm in his, and she chatters as they walk across the store, and kisses him on the cheek once.

They get stares; he's not surprised, but still irritated. Yet he gives in to her.

At the liqourice wand display, she shows him all the new variations with too much fascination, and he lets go of her, takes a step away, and pretends to listen, smiles and nods like he does to his father's friends. But she's not just a friend of his fathers, and not just a friend of his, either, not exactly.

After a few seconds he gets the urge to hold her hand again, to return her kiss and actually talk. So he gives in to that, too.

**generosity**

"Happy Christmas, Draco!" He felt happy when he heard that Luna was staying for the holidays, and yet, now, he feels a bit overwhelmed. Although he's almost glad to feel like that. She hugs him tightly and presses a strangely-wrapped gift into his hands. The thought of rejecting it comes to his mind, but Draco never says no to presents.

"Thanks," he gets out, awkwardly, and pulls out a much more neatly-packaged box wrapped in shiny, Slytherin-colored paper. He had no idea what to get her, but he thinks that this should do the trick. Luna can be made happy with simple things. She thanks him, and they look at each other, but neither makes a move at unwrapping their gift.

Draco laughs somewhat uncomfortably, and then turns to look towards the Slytherin table. "Well, I should be… getting back…."

She nods vigorously and then half-skips away, curls bouncing around her shoulders. He watches her, then goes back to his friends. They tease him, _What, is that from your little girlfriend or something? _He scowls and puts her present in his bag for later. He probably doesn't want to open it here, anyways. Mostly he hopes it's not alive and it won't kill him.

Even if Luna Lovegood just might.


	2. curant

**battered**

The Hogwarts library is peaceful in its atmosphere, but Draco doesn't seem to notice that. Instead he looks stressed and tired, and his friends start to ignore it when he tells them to. But Luna doesn't. She spots him when she peers between the rows of shelves on her way out—it's almost eight, closing time—and stops, goes over to where he now sits alone.

He looks up at her vaguely, while she watches him with her arms folded loosely. "You're tired, aren't you?"

"Do you have to ask?"

Luna blinks.

"Yeah," he drawls finally, "I am." He doesn't mention why; because, of course, it's not just his studies keeping him up at night. And Luna can't know that, even though she probably does. She sits down next to him and he doesn't protest, for once.

"Are you all right?"

"What?"

"Are you all right?"

"I heard you," he half snaps, and the permanently startled look on her face shifts. There are a few beats of silence between them, only the background noise of the library there.

"Well, _are _you?"

"Of course," he scoffs, because he's a Malfoy and pride has always been their biggest downfall, and Luna looks at him knowingly.

"Have you tried a sleeping potion?"

"Are you saying I should be drugged?" He breathes. "I'm _fine_, Loony, really," he insists, but she doesn't quite believe him.

**thunder**

Draco hates the rain because it reminds him of lonely days wandering around Malfoy Manor, and now he does the same thing at school. He looks out the window, and through the blur of raindrops he can see Luna outside, soaked through and swirling in circles.

He heads down the moving staircases and out a door until he stands under the cover of a roof extension. "You're going to get bloody pneumonia!" he calls over the thunder, wind, rain.

She turns and smiles at him. Her hair is turned dark brown and clings to her face with the water, impossibly tangled. She has to be freezing, he thinks. None of her clothes are remotely dry. "I thought you might come out here," she says, and spins again once.

He takes a step out from the shelter and can hear his teeth chattering. "Are you _human_?" Lighting flashes over the Forbidden Forest, with a crackle of thunder. "Come inside, before you get sick."

"The rain won't hurt me," she says idly, watching a bug crawl through the grass. "Do you want to see something?"

"Will you come inside then?"

"Mmhmm." She gives an unconcerned nod.

"Whatever." He follows her as she takes him by the hand out towards Hagrid's—stupid old fool's—hut, and then points at the ground.

"Dirt," he observes. "Fascinating."

"No, look." She points again, to flowers he can see blooming. They _are_ pretty, he supposes, but not like Luna is.

Nothing's quite like Luna.

**nightmare**

The wind whistles permanently around Ravenclaw Tower, Draco discovers when he sneaks into the common room there one night. Getting past any hall surveillance was easy for him, and he got the entrance riddle right—he_ is _intelligent, after all, or so he likes to think—and now he heads towards the dormitory that he knows Luna is in, looking for… what? Comfort? He just needs to know that she's still there. That's all.

Someone runs right into him and starts as though just awakening. "Draco!" they say, a bit too loudly. "You're here."

It's Luna, and he notes that she's still wearing shoes, and was sleepwalking. Yes. It's definitely Luna, all right.

"Yeah," he says.

"I had a dream about pudding," she says nonchalantly, looking around the room. "I think you were in it."

"In the pudding?"

"No, no in my dream."

"Well, you were in _my_ dream," he says, trying to get them on the right topic. "But you were… well… dead."

"Dead?"

"Dead. Or, at least, I think so. That's why I came here."

"That's nice," she says, not seeming worried. He wishes he could not worry about anything, but wishes she would worry more. "Did it bother you?"

"Well—yeah, of course." He stares. She touches his shoulder and runs her fingertips down to his hand, grips it tightly.

"Are you all right?" She's started asking him that more, he notices.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am, now."

**whisper**

Luna sites behind Draco in Charms, like she did in History of Magic, and the fact that she keeps watching him is very distracting. He feels like he's being stalked, and considering the war, that's not a good thing. But he doesn't mind knowing that he's caught her attention.

A paper folded like a butterfly, charmed to have flapping, working wings, lands on top of the page his textbook is open to; he unfolds it and reads the note.

_Quidditch pitch at seven?_

He can almost hear her accented, distant voice reading it—the handwriting is her usual swirls and extra lines. He writes _yes _on the back of the butterfly, folds it again, sloppily, and sends it back to her with a flick of his wand.

He turns around after a few seconds after hearing the paper being unfolded. She smiles, and gives a miniature wave like they haven't been talking or something. "Okay?" he mouths, just for conversation's sake, even though he'd assume the time and place _she_ set would be "okay" with her.

She nods. Draco whips around when Professor Flitwick walks by and then turns back. "Any reason?" he whispers, referring to their meeting.

"Why not?" she answers, a bit louder than he's talking, and almost drawing notice to them. The look on her face is almost genuinely confused.

"What?"

Professor Flitwick is back at his desk, and eyes them in particular as they notice the rest of the room has gone quiet. "Mr. Malfoy, if you're done flirting with Ms. Lovegood, you might want to turn to page one-hundred seventy-three."

He scowls viciously at the laughter and thinks that he'd report Flitwick for the comment… if he also wanted his father to know he was "flirting" with Luna.

**calm**

Draco waits in the Slytherin bleachers on the Quidditch pitch and reads the book his father sent him recently, because he's obligated to. He spots Luna over the top of the pages, and looks up. She's somewhat late, and he's not sure if it's because she's been busy talking to _Potter _again, or if it was the time taken to braid her hair and tie each braid with ribbons in two house's colors, or if she had to say hello to every butterfly she met on the way.

She sits down next to him, and tilts her head onto his shoulder, but apparently doesn't feel inclined to _say _anything. So he doesn't either, just keeps flipping pages in the book. Eventually he fumbles to hold it with one hand, and strokes Luna's thigh with the other. He wishes she would say something. He wishes _he _would say something.

"Hi," is what comes out.

She laughs at him, although it sounds like she doesn't know what's funny. "Hi."

"You wanted to meet here?"

"Mmhmm. It's just lovely out about this hour, during the spring."

He wonders if he should be insulted that she didn't just want to see him, and thinks that it's hard to be insulted by Luna. "It is," he agrees finally, trying to keep talking. He sets down the book, switches his hands, uses his now-free arm to wrap around her and pull her in closer. She doesn't protest it.

Neither does he.


	3. fortior

**young**

It occurs to Draco one day that Luna is a year behind him in school. He wonders, then, how they have classes together and such. Then again, Luna _is _strange, and that wouldn't be the weirdest thing. Besides that, she's in Ravenclaw and he's in Slytherin—an odd combination there, too. He has a schedule slightly different than a lot of his classmates, so that could be it. Or maybe it's something even beyond that. And those two houses can have classes together, so it's just the age that's all that weird, really.

Maybe the professors thought that having some classes with older students would help her socially, somewhat.

In any case, he's glad for History of Magic and Charms. But he makes a mental note to ask her about it later.

Their class schedule isn't the only thing on his mind with that realization. He was never really able to put a mental age on Luna, sometimes she seems four and sometimes she seems ninety-one. But she is younger, and a girl, and _Luna_, and he feels like that all should make him protective over her or something of the sort.

That seems so logical and yet ridiculous at the same time.

**jubilant**

Draco feels nothing but exhausted and achy after a Quidditch practice that runs late. Horribly late. He wants to kill Flint, but that's not really on the table right now. So he takes it, and instead heads inside, with some mud starting to dry against the bottom of his robes and his broomstick clutched in his hand. He's half bent-over and his feet are dragging against the ground. So he's in no mood to celebrate his winning in the mock game they played in half teams, oddly enough.

But Luna is, apparently. She appears somewhere in front of him with something strange in one hand, waving at him with the other. He smiles, although somewhere in his mind, he groans. That gets suppressed.

"Draco! You were excellent out there; if only it'd been a real match."

"You watched?"

"For a bit."

"Weren't you cold?"

She shrugs. "I went inside a bit early and got you this, to celebrate. The house elves in the kitchen had extras in the batch." She holds out a treacle tart on a small plate. "I had one, too, they're marvelous, and Harry likes them-"

"Potter," he snarls, instinctively.

"Oh, yes, they're his favorite." Luna seems unbothered by his tone. He remembers for too long of a second that Luna cheers for Gryffindor over Slytherin in every Quidditch match, and he's still not sure if that's an act. "Well, here you are." She holds the plate out to him more.

"Uh... thanks. But, my hands are still dirty-"

"No problem. Open up."

"What?" When he starts speaking, his mouth is suddenly full with the pastry, and he hastily chews and swallows and then waves her away. "A spoon would've worked, too," he says finally.

Luna just shrugs again.

**ridiculous**

Summer comes, with the unpredictable weather and all, and for Draco that means sitting in his room alone and being bored. There's no one for him to rule over here, really. It doesn't take him long to start thinking about the vague possibility of being able to visit Luna - best to have her over here, though, Merlin only knows where she lives and the Manor has to be better than it, anyway.

She's pure-blood enough, after all, so Father shouldn't protest adamantly. It's not completely ridiculous, is it? He asks.

"What ever happened to Pansy?" Lucius answers his son, not really saying no, but not saying yes, either. He seems reluctant.

"She's as dumb as her name," Draco says without skipping a beat, even though he doesn't completely think that. But he needs to make his case look whole-hearted, despite the complications.

"And 'Luna' isn't as dense?"

"No. Please, Father? She'd be good company to test the new elves with."

"Have you asked her about it?"

"Well, no. I thought I'd go to you first."

Lucius sighs. "Then send her an owl, and if she agrees to a time, we can talk."

"Thank you, Father." Draco tries to not skip back to his room to look for a parchment and quill.

**letter**

He's lying on his bed pretending to read one day when his owl pecks at the window. He gets up to let it in for just a second, and takes the letter from it harshly. He unrolls the parchment and first spots the flowers attached using spello-tape. Then he reads Luna's mostly-incoherent letter and tries to keep the stupidly wide grin off his face. He detaches the flowers and sends a house elf off to get a vase and water for them.

"Father!" he calls into the hall, impatient in his glee. "Father! Luna answered my owl, she says she can come at sunup on Wednesday!"

"Be quieter, Draco, you'll wake up your mother. What's this about 'sunup'?"

"Luna doesn't bother with time much."

"... Right. Sunup on Wednesday, she said?"

"Yes, Father." Draco tries to tame his smile into something a bit more cunning. "Is that all right?"

Lucius looks malcontent, but nods. "But I want to be there as soon as she shows up, if she does. Understood?"

"Yes, Father." As soon as he's dismissed, he leaves to send his owl back to Luna, urging it to fly as fast as it can.

**kindly**

They sit in the parlour, since Father won't let them go upstairs, which Draco supposes is reasonable. Luna barely touches any of the food he's set out, so Father lectures him on being a bad host. When they do manage to be alone, there's a lot of silence as they wonder what to talk about. He laughs nervously and just says, "So," a lot, and wonders if they should be sitting closer.

Finally Luna starts to open up, about some new creature she found in her garden a few days ago. He likes her clear passion about it, but doesn't really understand half of what she says, but smiles and nods, and then talks about some of the creatures in the gardens of the Manor, which she seems to like.

"Green and silver, you said? That sounds almost Slytherin-themed, doesn't it?" she asks about a snake he mentions.

"Almost," he shrugs.

She makes a comment on the décor of the room, very pure-blood themed. She likes it, but doesn't seem to understand it, just like how he feels about her garden talk. "It's all right, I guess," he says. "Father did it all himself. With some servant's help hanging things up."

"You kept the flowers," she answers, and nods at the vase. He moved them into here for today.

"I did."

"That's nice."

"I guess."

They both smile.


	4. dolor

**sin**

As soon as Draco curses Katie Bell, indirectly, there are a lot of people who know something is off about him, but they don't really know any of it. It had been meant for Dumbledore, but apparently cursing some girl he doesn't even know can still cause some amount of distress. Just a Gryffindor chaser a year ahead of him, one of Potter's gang last term. And he still feels constantly drowned in panic.

Under a lot of pretenses neither of them believe, he asks Luna all kinds of questions.

_Her best friends are Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet and Leanne. She was in the Dueling Club. Her boggart is the Dark Lord. Quidditch is her one actual passion. She would never even hurt a fly._

He wonders if he was asking out of some desire to make it all seem worse to himself, or if he's hoping that Luna will catch on (although she probably already has and just won't say anything).

Of course she won't—everyone's so paranoid about being under suspicion, themselves, and Luna's strange enough that people would start that rumor quickly. Or maybe it's that she's on _Potter's_ side and is silently angry with him for it.

(He tries to forget that theory.)

**torn**

"You know, I don't think you're as bad as people say you are," Luna says to him one day, and he splutters.

"What?"

She shrugged. "I don't know; I just don't think you're that bad."

"Bad like what?"

Her expression lights up and she points to somewhere off in the distance. "—Ooh, is that a Blibbering Humdinger?"

"_Loony_." He groans; these conversations never seem to go anywhere.

"Oh, wait… it's gone. Do you think I scared it off?" She asks it very seriously but Draco has to laugh. (And while he does, he subconsciously slips an arm around her shoulders and she just _looks _at him.)

"I highly doubt it," he drawls, amused, and his lips press against her hair. Then they're quiet, watching the very end of the sunset and the appearance of the first stars, because Luna likes to insist on doing that kind of thing. (Where she always finds the time for it, Draco doesn't know.) But despite the peace, his mind keeps going back to what she just about started the conversation with. "As bad". Does she still believe that he _is_?

She snuggles closer against him and he has to think not.

(But maybe he's only like this for her.)

**killing**

He dreads and dreads his next attempt. Poisoned wine. Fairly painless. He will be well out of the way for it. But that doesn't make it any better.

Luna catches him moping around the library (yet again) and embraces him tightly, which he tries to squirm away from, not in the mood for his "friends" to have something else to question him about. They're not exactly with him, at a table nearby while he's in the aisles of shelves; but it'd be hard not to notice Luna, with her upside-down book in hand and wand tucked behind one ear, disappearing into her hair.

"What?"

"You've been off today, Draco," she observes, closing the book properly.

"_Today?_ How long have you been here?"

She shrugs. Someone beyond the shelves hisses, "_Shh_," and he thinks that they'll soon have much bigger problems, if everything goes well, but his stomach clenches nonetheless.

"What, have you been off with Potter or something?"

"No," she says, not seeming to notice his tone, unconcerned.

(His resentment towards him is childish, he knows—because isn't that what they all are, under all of this? Children?)

There's some commotion nearby and he all but jumps out of his skin, wondering if that's _news_ reaching the library, but, no, it's not. He can't force himself to relax, still shaky, after. Luna touches his shoulder and he jumps again. "All right?"

"Fine," he snaps immediately, but doesn't really look at her, because they both know he's lying.

**lost**

The world is happening around him and he doesn't even notice. He gives up on most of his life—being a prefect, Quidditch, schoolwork, friends (his father doesn't buy his fake friendship with Pansy anymore), his appearance… resisting the urge to confide in a _ghost _about his problems.

He feels lonely but he doesn't seek out company, not even Luna's, but she finds him anyway.

This time, they're in the Owlery, on a rare, clean section of the floor, close together to fight the chill from the draftiness. (And she holds his head in her lap and pets his hair just like Pansy does, which annoys him, and it gives him a crick in his neck, and the floor is cold and hard, and yet… he can't make himself complain.)

"Isn't that owl a pretty one? I always watch it when I'm in here. It's adorable."

He glances up and sees the one she's gesturing to, a small bird with comically wide, round eyes, and soft-looking feathers in beige and gray-scale. "I guess it is."

"Mm," she says, satisfied, and leans over so that her lips brush his temple, his hair smoothed away from his face. (It's starting to get more straggly, like hers, as he gets more stressed. He wonders if she's noticed, if she cares. And he wonders what she thinks of them as. … He wonders what _he _thinks of them as.)

His thoughts scatter away from him.

**silence is golden**

(It turns out that he _can't do it, _and so he runs_._)

But after the funeral, Luna is wandering through the castle one last time, alone, when the door to the trophy room next to her opens a bit more, and someone grabs her arm, pulling her inside, the door closing quietly.

Draco appears as a cloak slips off of him.

Her squeal of surprise is muffled into his shoulder when he hugs her, relieved that his probably-illegal venture back into the castle wasn't for nothing. He doesn't want questions, right now, and he knows that Luna will indulge that even if she probably shouldn't….

(They trust each other too much, for all the wrong reasons, but—)

They don't need to talk. He has to leave and they both know that, and he doesn't want to, and they both know that, and he doesn't have to say _I love you_ or _I'll miss you _or _I'm sorry_, either.

He pulls back the slightest bit and kisses her, pressing and soothing, and it tastes like his tears. And after he draws away, she kisses him on the cheek and they clutch each other, for the few minutes that they have left.


End file.
